Fully Invested in Winning, the Phillies Add Taijuan Walker to the Mix

Free agents are getting paid handsomely this offseason, and that includes Taijuan Walker. On Tuesday night, it was reported that the 30-year-old right-hander had agreed to a four-year, $72 million contract with the Phillies — not exactly Aaron Judge or Trea Turner money, yet further evidence that this is anything but a bear market for players, particularly starting pitchers.

The Dave Dombrowski-led team has good reason to be bullish on its latest acquisition. Back to full health after shoulder and elbow woes cost him all but 14 innings in 2018 and ’19 (he threw 53.1 frames in the truncated 2020 campaign), Walker has tossed 316.1 innings over the past two seasons. Moreover, he’s coming off of a year where he logged a 3.49 ERA, a 3.65 FIP, and a 21.5% strikeout rate with the Mets.

The Phillies are coming off of a World Series appearance, and while that presumably appealed to Walker — who wouldn’t want to play for a team aggressively chasing rings? — so too would the progressive pitching environment he’ll be joining. When Walker was interviewed here at FanGraphs in January 2021, roughly one month before signing as a free agent with the Mets, he spoke of how he’d previously worked out at Driveline, and how, as a pitcher, “you’d clearly prefer that your next team is one that places a high value on technology and data.”

Jeremy Hefner, the Mets’ pitching coach for each of the past three seasons, is analytically-inclined. Philadelphia’s pitching coach is Driveline-educated Caleb Cotham.

The quality of Walker’s arsenal has improved since our conversation. That is especially true for his splitter, which he then likened to a sinker. It now dives: the pitch averaged 32.6 inches of vertical drop last season versus 27.7 in 2021 and 25.5 in ’20. The results were telling: batters hit .195 with a .267 slugging percentage against his splitter. Increased usage of what is now his best pitch played a big part in his success, too. Per Baseball Savant, the righty threw his splitter 689 times last season, nearly double what he did in 2021. Adding to its effectiveness is a sinker-like quality that remains; his average splitter velocity was a firm 88.8 mph.

As for the decision to add Walker — No. 22 in our 2023 Top 50 Free Agents rankings — to a starting rotation that has lost Zach Eflin, Kyle Gibson, and Noah Syndergaard but still includes Aaron Nola, Zack Wheeler, Ranger Suárez, the Phillies were at once conservative and aggressive in doing so. While the dollars and years were more than many expected, Walker didn’t receive a qualifying offer, which means Philadelphia won’t have to cede a draft pick. Given the team’s slightly below-the-middle-of-the-pack farm system ranking, looking beyond the next few years is prudent.

Dombrowski has a well-earned reputation of thinking shorter term when his team has a chance to win. He also has a track record of doing just that: building a championship-quality club. The Phillies are clearly all-in, as evidenced by their 11-year, $300 million mega-deal expenditure on Turner. They are clearly fully invested in returning to the World Series, and Walker’s addition — which is also a subtraction from the rival Mets — is another step in getting them there.